Making Meaning Through Perspectivism

Abstract

This thesis examines the philosophy of perspectivism, originating with Friedrich Nietzsche, and its most recent developments. Put simply, the perspectivist holds that all conceptual grasping of reality takes place from a particular point of view – one possible interpretation among many. Through merely being alive, we are in touch with reality, but this connection between our subjective experience and objective reality is necessarily limited by several factors, such as our location in time and space. Other limitations on our perspective include self-imposed dogmatism, the grammatical structure of language, and our own anatomy. This thesis explores how the philosophy of perspectivism can be used to create meaning by taking new perspectives to expand our horizons, while acknowledging certain hard limits of our perspective.